Robert Wilson - Eureka Street - A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

`Hello.!

`Mamie?'

`Yes. Who's that?'

Jake!

'What's wrong?'

'Nothing. I just called to see if you were both OK.'

'Jake, I've never known you conscious before nine o'clock, never mind making social phone calls'

'Yeah, yeah:

'Are you going to tell me what's wrong?'

'Let me talk to Matt'

There was some inaudible scuffling and grumbling and Matt came on the line. `Hello, Jake:

'You had any surprise callers recently, Matt?'

'No. Will we have?'

'No. 'I paused. I'd chosen to speak to Matt not because I was sexist but because I knew Matt was marginally less macho than his wife. If Mamie heard about it she'd be out there with a Kalashnikov. `Don't say anything to Mamie but if you get any visitors you don't know, you call me.'

'All right.' '

'It's nothing, Matt. Just some guys looking for me about some money. They might remember that I used to live there.'

Right,' he said insincerely.

'I'll speak to you soon.'

Matt was silent. 'Listen, Jake,' he said uncertainly, `we've got something here for you.You can have it when you call next. If we live that long.'

I laughed.'You're not going to tell me what it is? You always loved mystery, Matt. Hey, listen, tell Mamie I'm going on the Peace Train today. She'll like that'

I heard him relay the information and I heard Mamie's unmistakable snort of derision.

'Tell your old lady to give me a break,' I chided him. 'She should be pleased. It's a whole new me.'

`That would be nice,' said Matt.

I hung up. I called Chuckie and told him about my parcel. Let me think about it, he said. He felt that he could help. I didn't hold out much hope. I said I'd meet him at the station for the Peace Train Jaunt. He sounded a little vague. Sure, he said, sure. I didn't like the sound of that but he'd hung up and I couldn't be bothered calling him back.

I decided that I'd deal with Crab and Hally later. I had no real idea of how I'd deal with them but the phrase about dealing with them later made me feel indomitable. That was a comfort.

I looked out. My cat was in the driveway, trying to do his hungry and maltreated look for passers-by. I finished my coffee. I tightened my tie. I put his breakfast out and I went out to do what I could to bring peace to the world.

By two o'clock in the afternoon I was enjoying myself. The sunshine was warm and there was a light breeze that ruffled my hair. The grass was a pleasant seat and it was fun to check out the peace girls as they struggled up and down the bank and congregated in their enviable little groups.

It had started pretty badly. We all met at Central Station. In the whole hundred and fifty or couldn't find Slat, Chuckie or Max. I wasn't at all surprised that Chuckie hadn't turned up, but I hadn't expected Slat's desertion.

The gig at the station was typical. It had been the usual worthy Irish pacifist event. A couple of dull speeches by people you would have crossed the road to avoid, a single local TV crew and the desultory crowd.

I was, however, astonished to see Shague Ghinthoss mount the platform and address the audience about the price for peace, which we all had to pay and which we all would afford, Protestants and Catholics alike, if we could only live together in mutual respect and amity. I was going to shout abuse about last night but I thought people might have suspected that I'd been having sex with him or something and, besides, who would have listened? Ghinthoss was a famous face, or rather, several famous faces.

And I must admit I had a sneaking admiration for his style. He might have been a hypocritical Janus-faced tosspot but if there was a camera crew around he'd be there.

I had no sneaking admiration for what followed. A couple of folk singers got up and did their dreadful stuff. A chick with a harp strummed for a little while and then a group of young painters had an impromptu exhibition of what they called their peace pictures. These heroes were told to move amongst the crowd with their little daubs. I moved up close for that.TheTV camera zoomed in on one guy who was holding a painting of what looked only vaguely like a dead fish.

'Oh, yes,' I heard him say into the boom.'My painting represents the struggle for peace. I had to decide whether the fish should be alive or dead. I think it has great significance that in this painting you can't really tell whether the fish is dead or alive,' you couldn't really tell it was a fucking fish, 'and, of course, the fish also has all sorts of religious and political connotations. It reminds me in a way ofTolstoy.'

I nearly hit him for that. I'd always been fond ofTolstoy and at least old Leo had done some actual work. I'd seen lots of arty bullshit in Northern Ireland. Provincial but famous, it could produce almost nothing else. Subsidized galleries stocked full of the efforts of useless middle-class shitheads too stupid to do anything else, too stupid to pass the exams that their folks paid for. But I'd never seen anything to match the fishboy.

'This fish gives me hope,' he said emotionally. 'I think this fish can give us all some hope.'

The great Ghinthoss embraced the fishboy grandly and people around them applauded.

We got on the train. We set off. It was quite sweet for forty minutes or so. It felt like quite a clean-shaven, cardiganned thing to be doing. Here I was riding a Peace Train from Belfast to Dublin to protest against the IRA planting bombs on the Belfast to Dublin line. There was going to be another meeting at Dublin station.

But we didn't get to Dublin. There was a bomb on the Belfast to Dublin line. Boom boom.

The train was stopped on a bridge over an embankment just after Portadown. People were stunned, not by the irony but by the unexpectedness of it. I thought that odd: bombs were the subject of their efforts. But these were educated bourgeois and they didn't expect that anything they did could be affected by these vicious, callous, working-class terrorists. When those guys planted the bomb they must have been tempted to strafe the train as well.

Robbed of their Dublin protest, some of the peace folk just got off the train and waved their placards about on the line.The railway people went nuts but the TV crew loved it. There was some problem with the line on the way back. It looked like being a long delay so most of the rest of us got out too.

I sat on the bank and smoked some cigarettes. Like I said, I was beginning to have fun. And I was glad that we hadn't made it to Dublin. It wasn't that I didn't like Dublin. Sometimes Dublin was OK but sometimes Dublin gave me the shits.

I was only thinking this acrid stuff to avoid thinking about the girl sitting on the grass close by, whom I was definitely considering marrying. Yeah, I was in love. Again. How bored my friends would be when I told them.

I'd noticed her first as we were boarding the train. Midtwenties, dark-haired, short, grave-featured. I made sure we were in the same carriage and watched her furtively. Like most of the other women soulful wore no make-up though her mouth was set in a line of pursed, inept lipstick. She was with a small group of enthusiastic girls and good-natured, turtle-necked, clean-shaven boys.

She noticed me notice her. I took no comfort from this because of my suit. I was the only man not wearing some form of woolly jumper. I hoped it lent me a decadent, attractive air, but for all I knew it might have made me look like a secret policeman.

When the train was stopped and we all got out, her group sat close enough to where I was sitting. Without Slat and the others, I'd felt uncomfortably solitary, as though I stuck out. But there on the grass with the event crashing around everyone's ears, I felt that my besuited uniqueness could only have looked pretty desirable.

With the train stopped on the bridge and everybody sitting on the grass or doing community singing or giving desultory TV interviews it was all pretty embarrassing. Even the train looked faintly embarrassed on the bridge, as though fearful of us seeing up its skirt.